When sitting quietly one of the first give aways to a woodpeckers presence is the very distinctive tapping that is heard.
Interesting that the two species have different tapping noises, must listen more carefully in future.

Elsa wrote:When sitting quietly one of the first give aways to a woodpeckers presence is the very distinctive tapping that is heard.

When the tapping sound is at a regular rhythm, they are communicating…when it is irregular they are looking for food.
I also heard that the shape of the hole to their nests differ…is that true?
Apparently they also make their nests on the bottom side of a branch to prevent rain from getting in.

j-ms wrote:One of the ways to pickup Beared vs Cardinal if you can't see them that well is that the Bearded's pecking sounds like a jackhammer compared the Cardinals's.

I saw a cardinal yesterday... Is it true in saying that the bearded woody is a lot bigger in size than the cardinal... I was fortunate enough to get a perfect sighting of the little fellow for a few minutes, while he hopped around banging in different various branches (Obviosly - looking for food?)

"Practice makes perfect, but no one's perfect, so why the hell practice?"

After having a look at your photos. I came up with two possibilities, female cardinal woodpecker and female bearded woodpecker. However, i am positive your sighting is a female bearded woodpecker because it doesnt hav the distinguished brown forehead that a cardinal woodpecker has. Also their habitats differ quite a bit. Bearded woodpeckers tend to stay around tall or dead trees. . Where cardinal woodpeckers have a vast variety of habitats. . The number of woodpecker species in kruger is very limited so it is definitely a female bearded woodpecker as you suggested. But who knows it could even be a juvenile little spotted woodpecker. But they only occurs deeper into mozambique.

This Bearded Woodpecker (a lifer for me and Skillie) entertained us for hours at Klein Kariba near the waterfall, September 8. He was flying back and forth to his nest across the water with insects he found in the tree. We could not locate his nest, but he was back at the tree very quickly to find more bugs. On the last photo you can see his tongue going into one of the many little holes he made.

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